User Services Area Director(s): o Joyce Reynolds: jkrey@isi.edu Area Summary reported by Joyce Reyolds/ISI Eight working groups and one BOF (Birds of a Feather) in the User Services Area of the IETF met in Boston, Massachusettes. Below is a summary of the User Services IETF activities. Directory Resources Engineering Group BOF (DREGS) One BOF was held in the User Services area regarding a Working Group formation on WHOIS and User Lookup Services. This Group would be a joint venture between the Applications Area and the User Services Area of the IETF. The intent of this BOF was to look at recommendations to make WHOIS a generally useful service, with two specific focuses. On the one hand, to have a common name host for a WHOIS services (e.g., whois@ucdavis.edu), and secondly to develop an optional suggested inquiry and response format. Directory Information Services (pilot) Infrastructure Working Group (DISI) The DISI Working Group, chaired by Christopher Weider is a Working Group that provides a forum to define user requirements in X.500. It is a combined effort of the User Services Area and the OSI Integration Area of the IETF. DISI's session focused on additional documentation they would like to produce. There was a discussion of what other documents should be written in addition to those that are listed in the DISI Charter. An advanced usages document has made some progress since the last IETF. Discussion of the revision of RFC 1292 (``A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations'') took place. Chris asked for volunteers to help with the updating of this FYI RFC. This Working Group is beginning to wind down and will probably disband within the next 4-8 months. Internet Anonymous FTP Archives Working Group (IAFA) Chaired by Peter Deutsch and Alan Emtage. The IAFA Working Group, Chaired by Peter Deutsch and Alan Emtage, is chartered to define a set of recommended standard procedures for the access and administration of anonymous FTP archive sites on the Internet. The IAFA Working Group had its final review of their working draft of 1 ``An Anonymous FTP Site Manager's Guide'', which had been worked on via electronic mail in the past few months. There was discussion of future work, including a manager's overview guide for other systems such as Gopher, WAIS, WWW, etc. Internet School Networking Working Group (ISN) Chaired by John Clement, Art St. George, and Connie Stout. The ISN Working Group, Chaired by John Clement, Art St. George, and Connie Stout, is chartered to facilitate the connection of the United States' K-12 (Kindergarten-12th Grade) schools, public and private, to the Internet, and school networking in general. ISN's Working Group sessions gather educators and Internet folks together. This Boston session continued the discussion on connectivity models for schools...what networking infrastructure currently exist in schools, and to determine a pattern of growth. ISN presented various rough working drafts by various authors. The drafts represent multi-generic connectivity models for schools. ISN has two current goals. One is to prepare an RFC-to-be that includes various examples of models for schools, with the focus primarily on IP connectivity. ISN's document and intent is not to recommend to schools any one model, but to present various suggestions and various models for school systems to look at. Then the school systems can take these models, choose one for their needs, their students' needs, and how much they have in their budgets to contribute to equipment and software. The second goal is to develop a FAQ (frequently asked questions) on resources. Internet User Glossary Working Group (USERGLOS) USERGLOS, Chaired by Gary Malkin and Tracy LaQuey Parker, is chartered to create an Internet specific glossary of networking terms and acronyms for the Internet community. USERGLOS had two afternoon marathon sessions to continue to find Internet specific terms that are needed in this glossary and to weed out additional words that are not pertinent. This Group competed the final entry review of the glossary and determined that many of the definitions need more work. Volunteers were enlisted. The end of August will be the final Working Group pass and then the document will be submitted as an Internet-Draft by the end of September. NOC-Tool Catalogue Revisions Working Group (NOCTOOL2) The ``Son of NOCTools'' Working Group, Chaired by Bob Enger, is updating and revising their catalog to assist network managers in the selection and acquisition of diagnostic and analytic tools for TCP/IP Internets. The NOCTOOL2 Working Group has been a little slow in getting the entries 2 in. Entries are continuing to arrive, and Bob is pushing hard on final document compilation and completion for an Internet Draft submission in the next two months. Network Information Services Infrastructure Working Group (NISI) The NISI Working Group is exploring the requirements for common, shared Internet-wide network information services. The goal is to develop an understanding for what is required to implement an information services ``infrastructure'' for the Internet. NISI's session focused on their Internet Draft, ``Privacy and Accuracy Issues in Network Information Center Databases''. This document is ready to be submitted to the RFC Editor for publication. There were no additional comments or changes. Review of NISI's NetHelp draft included content and implementation scrutiny. What is NetHelp?? It is a new utility that is being developed within the NISI Working Group, which provides information to users. Further work on NetHelp includes setting up a template via the NISI e-mailing list, developing NetHelp, and writing documentation. NISI needs to reset their goals and milestones within their Charter to reflect this new work. User Documents Revisions Working Group (USERDOC2) The USERDOC2 Working Group, Chaired by Ellen Hoffman and Lenore Jackson, is preparing a revised bibliography of on-line and hardcopy documents, reference materials, and training tools addressing general networking information and how to use the Internet. The target audience includes those individuals who provide services to end users and end users themselves. USERDOC2's original bibliography was published in August of 1990. It is sorely out of date. This is the new revised Working Group. A draft document was presented at this session, ``FYI on Introducing the Internet - a Short Bibliography of Introductory Internetwork Readings for the Network Novice''. This is document is intended to be a short 2-3 page document, with a ``companion'' document to follow that will be longer in length and more comprehensive for various levels of users, not just novices. A keywords list will also be included for quick, easy reference. User Services Working Group (USWG) USWG, Chaired by Joyce K. Reynolds, provides a regular forum for people interested in all user services to identify and initiate projects designed to improve the quality of information available to end-users of the Internet. The NOCTOOL2 session took 15 minutes of the USWG session to discuss their progress. They needed to meet in this slot, due to time constraints. Darren Kinley has resigned as co-Chair due to lack of funding money to continue to attend IETFs. 3 Daniel Dern presented a talk on his book in progress, ``Internet Guide for New Users'' (McGraw/Hill Publishers). This discussion included what Dan is doing, the perception of some of the need for these types of books, other similar activities (e.g., Zen, EFF, SRI NISC, SIGUCCS, etc.), publishers and contracts - pointers for authors, and what he has learned from this experience. Ed Krol is also working on a book. Paul Holbrook briefly discussed the CICNet Resources Guide that has just been published. Jill Foster provided an update on RARE activities, including a report on the RARE Information Services/User Services (ISUS) activities. Peter Deutsch led a discussion on a USWG project in development currently called, ``An Internet Quick and Dirty''. It is intended to be a short document on descriptions of each network service with pointers on where to obtain additional information. Ideas and thoughts on forming a working group on training materials and having the endeavor be a joint effort between RARE & IETF was discussed. The Group decided that a BOF at the next IETF would be a good start to pursue this topic. Jill Foster and Ellen Hoffman volunteered to co-Chair the BOF. 4